Mine weighs 1.5 tons and is going strongly into it’s sixth year of existence at about 95% capacity left. 3/4 of the year I’m driving it exclusively using power from my own roof. It uses about 14kWh/100km which is the equivalent of about 1.3 Liters of Gasoline. I fail to see how all of this is not an advantage.
I have an electric bike for those instances where I only need to transport myself and a backpack. But then again, I’ve got a few hectars of forest to take care of, family within a 100km radius and a girlfriend and a dog, so riding my bike is not always an option.
Yeah I am not doing that again. It was fun when I was single but not so much when you have kids. Yes I have done the sidecar thing and yes I have been to regions of the world where this is the norm. Not doing it again, all it takes is one accident and my family will be dead.
Yes, a noble idea, sure, but what do I do now with the ressources available to me? I am not a politician, people here laugh about the green party because most of them are farmers, land owners and factory workers, so voting green has some sort of meaning for the stats but doesn’t impact anything in local politics. I don’t own a company, I’m not responsible for public transport or any decisions related to it and I’m not rich enough for outright bribery lobbyism, so what I can do is:
turn most of my appliances to running on electricity
make as much electricity as possible locally from renewables
Hence, electric cars. Oh yeah, and taking the bike when possible, I do that.
Home batteries, wallbox for the cars (honestly, those are just fancy plugs with some switching logic) and panels was about 30k€, heatpump and floor heating was about 60k€. The heatpump helps with using even more of my own energy. Currently I’m almost 100% self sufficient (including mobility, except for lonmg range drives) between the middle of march and the middle of october, which is okay. At current inflation rates all this will have paid for itself in about 18 years in comparison to more traditional versions of all of it.
It’s actually spewing tire and brake particles everywhere. It’s responsible for 30% of microplastics in our environment. It should not be anywhere near our main mode of transportation in the future.
Coming straight from “unless 100% of people abstain 100% I’m not calling it change”-folks. There’s significant shifts in both of these issues. Meat more so, or leading ahead compared to cars, but the fact that some people aren’t going to drop one or either doesn’t change anything about that.
So maybe efforts to reduce the impact of those kinds of things aren’t necessarily wasted.
Not only are they not wasted, they are absolutely necessary. What’s important to understand is, however, that large parts of the negative impact of cars aren’t affected by EVs at all. It’s not just internal combustion engine exhaust pollution, it’s the waste of space, gigatons of asphalt for roads and parking, microplastics from rubber tires driven endless miles by a billion people, traffic congestions and the never-ending demand for another lane to fix them, ““cities”” sprawling out so far that everything is too far to get to by any means other than driving, pedestrian (if such a thing even still exists in your neck of the woods) safety, noise, socioeconomic factors such as the high upkeep costs vs low-income population who are reliant on a car in a car dependant world, …
We have to transition to EVs either way, but it’s not going to fix anything meaningful. And that’s just the neutral outlook, a real danger we’re facing is that through car manufacturers’ greenwashing that is already in full swing, we coax ourselves to a good eco conscience over our no-emissions cars and continue growing the dependency, which would eventually increase the impact. The only real way of reducing the impact is by reducing cars and car dependency where it’s possible. And people are, very slowly, waking up to the fact that this is more often the case than they were led to believe by lobby driven media and politics of the last 60 years.
Electric cars are still a 3 ton object you’ll needlessly try to dispose of in 5 years.
Electric cars are here to save the car companies, not the environment.
Mine weighs 1.5 tons and is going strongly into it’s sixth year of existence at about 95% capacity left. 3/4 of the year I’m driving it exclusively using power from my own roof. It uses about 14kWh/100km which is the equivalent of about 1.3 Liters of Gasoline. I fail to see how all of this is not an advantage.
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So, what do we do with this insight? Like, right now?
We keep complaining, obviously.
buy a moped?
I have an electric bike for those instances where I only need to transport myself and a backpack. But then again, I’ve got a few hectars of forest to take care of, family within a 100km radius and a girlfriend and a dog, so riding my bike is not always an option.
Yeah I am not doing that again. It was fun when I was single but not so much when you have kids. Yes I have done the sidecar thing and yes I have been to regions of the world where this is the norm. Not doing it again, all it takes is one accident and my family will be dead.
Encourage investment in public transit.
Yes, a noble idea, sure, but what do I do now with the ressources available to me? I am not a politician, people here laugh about the green party because most of them are farmers, land owners and factory workers, so voting green has some sort of meaning for the stats but doesn’t impact anything in local politics. I don’t own a company, I’m not responsible for public transport or any decisions related to it and I’m not rich enough for outright
briberylobbyism, so what I can do is:Hence, electric cars. Oh yeah, and taking the bike when possible, I do that.
That’s awesome, but how much does a car + charger + home batteries + solar roof cost upfront? I know it will eventually pay itself off.
I would love to go the same path but I know the upfront cost of all of this stuff can be pretty insane
Home batteries, wallbox for the cars (honestly, those are just fancy plugs with some switching logic) and panels was about 30k€, heatpump and floor heating was about 60k€. The heatpump helps with using even more of my own energy. Currently I’m almost 100% self sufficient (including mobility, except for lonmg range drives) between the middle of march and the middle of october, which is okay. At current inflation rates all this will have paid for itself in about 18 years in comparison to more traditional versions of all of it.
5 years??? You change cars every 5 years?
Me love traaaiins!
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It’s actually spewing tire and brake particles everywhere. It’s responsible for 30% of microplastics in our environment. It should not be anywhere near our main mode of transportation in the future.
Got any stats for that or is it just the usual anti-EV BS where you equate EVs to cellphones? No? Of course you don’t and are just making shit up.
Anti-EV? The fuck are you talking about this is anti car dependance.
I’m referring to the “dispose of in 5 years” comment, as if EVs are easily outmoded throwaway tech like cellphones.
A fairly standard anti-EV comment, often paired with the “worse for the environment” comment.
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Coming straight from “unless 100% of people abstain 100% I’m not calling it change”-folks. There’s significant shifts in both of these issues. Meat more so, or leading ahead compared to cars, but the fact that some people aren’t going to drop one or either doesn’t change anything about that.
Not only are they not wasted, they are absolutely necessary. What’s important to understand is, however, that large parts of the negative impact of cars aren’t affected by EVs at all. It’s not just internal combustion engine exhaust pollution, it’s the waste of space, gigatons of asphalt for roads and parking, microplastics from rubber tires driven endless miles by a billion people, traffic congestions and the never-ending demand for another lane to fix them, ““cities”” sprawling out so far that everything is too far to get to by any means other than driving, pedestrian (if such a thing even still exists in your neck of the woods) safety, noise, socioeconomic factors such as the high upkeep costs vs low-income population who are reliant on a car in a car dependant world, …
We have to transition to EVs either way, but it’s not going to fix anything meaningful. And that’s just the neutral outlook, a real danger we’re facing is that through car manufacturers’ greenwashing that is already in full swing, we coax ourselves to a good eco conscience over our no-emissions cars and continue growing the dependency, which would eventually increase the impact. The only real way of reducing the impact is by reducing cars and car dependency where it’s possible. And people are, very slowly, waking up to the fact that this is more often the case than they were led to believe by lobby driven media and politics of the last 60 years.
1 word: Batteries